WVS at MY World 2 workshop

MY World 2 technical workshop took place on June, 19, 2015 in the Overseas Development Institute in London.

The goal of the workshop was to provide expert inputs during the development of a set of opinion polling instruments to track how people are perceiving progress over time in the areas covered by new Sustainable Development Goals. This perceptions data will sit alongside the official indicators for monitoring progress that will be agreed in March 2016. The participants of the workshop were asked to contribute to exploring possibilities for a range of activities under the MY World 2 brand, including a regular set of nationally representative polls collecting globally comparable data, and more customized national and local surveys designed to interact with the local political context.

The UN MY World survey has shown that it is both possible and valuable to bring peoples’ voices directly into policy making at a global level (http://vote.myworld2015.org/). Launched in 2012, MY World was designed to bring the voices of individual people into the political deliberations on the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and it has been highly successful in doing so. Over seven million people have responded to the survey, and the results have fed into every part of the political process for creating the new goals. MY World has been cited as part of the High Level Panel deliberations, the Open Working Group discussions, the PGA consultations and the Independent Expert Group on Data. The SG, DSG, Special Adviser on Post-2015 Development Planning, Secretary General Youth Envoy and chair of the UNDG reference the MY World data.

MY World presents 16 issues that tend to be among most people’s highest priorities, communicates them in simple everyday language and asks individuals to identify the 6 priorities which are most important for ‘you and your family’. People are also given the opportunity to propose an additional issue as a 17th option. When filling in the survey, people are asked to provide their gender, age, educational level and country.

The simplicity of the question, and the insistence on holding it constant through the lifetime of the survey, has allowed all the data collected to be aggregated into a single database.

To date, 7.5 million responses have been gathered from 194 countries with over 70% gathered from people under the age of 30. Over 1,000 partners from civil society, through local governments, private sector, faith based organisation, volunteers and individuals have driven participation in MY World primarily through offline voting (77%). The additional 23% of responses have been gathered online and through a variety of mobile streams and applications.

A publicly available data site (data.myworld2015.org) captures information in real time and visualises aggregate and disaggregated priorities. The disaggregation can be cut by gender, age, education level, country, method of survey application and partner.

MY World was co–created by ODI, UNDP and the UN Millennium Campaign and offered to the post 2015 process as a global public good set within the UN-led global consultation on the new development agenda. IPSOS/MORI have provided advice on survey design and methodology. UNV, UNICEF and UNF were key strategic partners in the response gathering and partner recognition process. DPI played a critical role in communication and awareness.

Given the success of MY World in bringing people’s voices directly into political processes, the EOSG and other players have requested that some early consideration be given to how MY World might be revised to contribute to the implementation and monitoring of the new SDGs (MY World 2).